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Global mental health: an improved measure of well-being in multiple languages

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Type

Article

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Authors

Graeff-Buhl-Nielsen, Sophia 
Garcia-Garzon, Eduardo 
Benzerga, Amel 
Folke, Tomas 
Ruggeri, Kai 

Abstract

Abstract: Background: An increasing number of international organisations and national governments have committed to well-being promotion. Unfortunately, important questions regarding how to assess well-being are still unresolved, making policy implementation and evaluation difficult. Methods: This research expanded on Huppert and So’s (Soc Indic Res. 110, 837–861 2013) multidimensional subjective well-being framework by investigating the replicability of the model in two non-European regions (South America, represented by Brazil and Colombia, and Eastern Africa, represented by Uganda), and the United Kingdom. Additionally, previous limitations of the framework were also addressed. ESS Round Six items were crucially improved in terms of temporal and response scale consistency. Bayesian approximate measurement invariance was applied on a sample of 381 young adult participants to test for consistency across countries. Results: The Huppert & So (Soc Indic Res. 110, 837–861 2013) model was found to fairly replicate across non-European regions, where meaningful differences in well-being patterns across regions were observed. Additionally, estimated well-being was related with other well-being measures (Five Ways): Learn and Connect were the strongest predictors of general well-being, with Take Notice and Give being associated with specific aspects of it. Conclusions: Based on this narrow sample of young adults, it appears the ten-item measure proposed by Huppert & So (Soc Indic Res. 110, 837–861 2013) is useful for assessing population mental health outside of Europe. This is only an initial attempt to assess qualities, so further testing should be done before applying at scale for identifying policy opportunities to address well-being of populations.

Description

Keywords

Research, Well-being, Policy, Measurement, Population, Cross-cultural

Journal Title

Health and Quality of Life Outcomes

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1477-7525

Volume Title

18

Publisher

BioMed Central
Sponsorship
Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Grant FPU 15/03246)
UK Research and Innovation (R4HC-MENA)